Updated November 11, 2024: The Court of Administrative and Public Law of the Cantonal Court maintains the suspensive effect provisionally granted in October, following an appeal. Le Temps reports this decision, rendered on November 7. The article specifies that it is the Geneva company Kheops which is at the origin of this appeal. The Vaud University Hospital Center and the Federation of Vaud Information Hospitals in turn appealed against the suspensive effect, minimizing the scope of the criterion at the origin of Kheops’ appeal. But the Vaud judicial authorities did not agree with the adjudicator, “The response that the respondent authorities provided in the context of the questions/answers would thus go beyond the framework of a simple clarification and would be akin to a modification of the conditions call for tenders, which is not in principle possible,” estimated the judge in charge of the case, reports Le Temps (paywall).
Original article from October 15, 2024: The CHUV call for tenders for its clinical system is controversial
The CHUV published a call for tenders for its new clinical information system in mid-September with a deadline of October 31 to respond. Last Friday, however, the offerers were notified on the Simap platform of the suspension of the procedure following the appeal of a supplier.
According to the Temps investigation, the call for tender irritates several local medical software publishers, who criticize it in particular for being tailored to favor the solution of the American giant Epic and for including establishments grouped together in the Federation of Vaudois Hospitals. (FHVi).
In the tender documentation consulted by ICTjournal, we can read that the new clinical information system must replace the Soarian software from Oracle-Cerner, installed at the CHUV and the FHVi hospitals, which will no longer be maintained after 2027 and will become unusable in 2029. The CHUV wishes to take advantage of this to equip itself with an integrated and scalable system covering a much wider scope (operating theater, patient and resource planning, management transport, intensive care, emergencies, etc.) and allowing the creation of a patient file at the regional level for all institutions. The system is to be implemented until March 2028.
What bothers
Several suppliers believe that the call for tender favors the American Epic, reveals the Temps investigation. Certain criteria would de facto exclude solutions from local publishers, such as the German-speaking Cistec and the French-speaking Kheops and Tecost. In particular, it is required that the system is already in production in hospitals of similar size in Switzerland or Europe, that it covers the entire functional scope (product developments and integrations are excluded), and that the supplier has supported establishments in their Emram Stage 7 certification. “At present, two companies in the world have supported hospitals towards Emram 7 certification: the Americans Epic and Cerner, but the latter has no longer been interested in the European market for several years,” specifies an expert at Time. Contacted by ICTjournal, a Swiss sector expert is affirmative: “It will be Epic”.
Several players are also irritated by the integration of the FHVi in the call for tenders, which could be affected by the less extensive software in place in regional hospitals. “It appears quite clearly that the solution envisaged for the CHUV is not suitable for smaller hospitals. The needs of a university hospital (academic research in addition to the clinical and training mission) are not the same as those of a regional hospital,” wrote the Thematic Commission for Public Health of the Grand Conseil Vaudois in a published report. in February in 2023.
Epic advances its pawns in Switzerland
The report in question explicitly mentions Epic on several occasions and judges it “highly probable that four of the five Swiss university hospitals have the same tool”. Changes in clinical systems are indeed going well in the country and Epic is gaining ground. The Inselspital in Bern has been using the solution since 2023. In Zurich, the university hospital (USZ) launched a call for tenders for its future clinical system in February, which would favor Epic. “The wording of this call for tenders indicates that the USZ absolutely wants to introduce Epic,” analyzes the site Inside-IT.ch. At Basel Hospital, a new call for tenders was launched at the end of 2023 following the takeover of the publisher of the solution chosen two years earlier. In the ranks we would find the system of the Swiss Cistec…..and Epic.
Not all university hospitals are opting for Epic, however. Last spring, the University Hospitals of Geneva (HUG) and the Valais Hospital announced the joint development of DPI+, a multilingual clinical information system based on the HUG in-house system and its integrated patient file. According to Le Temps, the CHUV would also have been interested in the HUG solution in 2022, before choosing another path…
